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The idea of god was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure. Desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father; for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind. (Sigmund Freud)

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing; fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. (Bertrand Russell)

Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place. (Angela Carter)

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. (Albert Einstein)

Most people are bothered by those passages in scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in scripture which trouble me most are those that I do understand. (Mark Twain)

Why am I an atheist? I ask you: Why is anybody not an atheist? Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated. I resent anyone pushing their religion on me. I don't push my atheism on anybody else. Live and let live. Not many people practice that when it comes to religion. (Andy Rooney)

You know, this attitude astounds me. I consider myself the product of a marvelous and intricate four billion year process that unifies me with the entire biological world at a very deep and intimate level. These people tend to see themselves as the product of some god's whim enacted upon some random lump of clay dredged from a river. And I am the one who is supposed to feel demeaned by my perceived origins? The mind boggles. (Andrew Lias)

Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing “does not!”

We can form a fair notion of what the devout believer's "experience of god" is like. At every turn, it sounds very much like wishing hard, or compulsively pretending, or claiming to experience something that is felt to be meritorious to experience, or getting a thrill out of daringly affirming something evidently untrue, or regressing to the mental state of the five-year-old who says he has a big, chatty, invisible companion. (David Ramsay Steele).